Because they were a bunch of lazyboneses, Arab On Radar (or AOR) (or "Album-Oriented Rock") tended to release albums of 8 or 9 songs that ended in about 20 minutes. We can agree to disagree about this, but I consider these not 'full-length CD's but 'EP's. As such, this 'full-length CD' contains Arab On Radar's first two 'EP's: 1997's Queen Hygiene II produced by Bob Weston of Shellac fame, and 1998's Rough Day At The Orifice produced by Weasel Walter of Flying Luttenbachers fame. Let's discuss each separately.

Disgusting Lyrics Include:
- "Mommy is in the dog house soaking up the piss with cotton balls"
- "Her underwear has April showers & I am pissing on her May flowers"
- "I just want to glance at her nipples. They are getting bigger, bigger and bigger."
- "I do not keep my dentures clean because of this diaper rash and guilt about my wet dreams"
- "My mouth is dripping saliva. Get get get a muzzle for my vagina."
- "Rapunzel!!! Rapunzel!!! Let down your long pubic hair."
- "Every 9 seconds I get a fingernail-bitten, throbbing sensation. Then my heart falls out my ass."

Queen Hygiene II earns an 8 on my scale. At its best, it's genius and hypnotic. At its worst, one of the guitars just goes 'deeoo deeoo deeoo.'

ROUGH DAY AT THE ORIFICE finds the drummer getting REALLY dumb (and wonderfully so!) for the first time, but unfortunately the guitarists don't appear to be listening to each other at all anymore, hurting the feelings of guitar interplay fans such as myself. Too often, one of the guitars just slides up and down a string, failing to contribute anything at all to the overall 'melody' as it were. The last album was a masterwork of lock-step sicko guitar interplay; this one, though still good, tries for something more abstract and doesn't always connect. Plus the guitars sound even tinnier than before!

Diversions From The General Sound Include:
- "Split Lip": the guitars sound like a meowing cat and chirping bird!
- "Menstruating Thrills": features a bassy-toned guitar!
- "Herpes Simplex II": A retarded lopey-sounding ridiculous hilarious mess! The bass sounds like a walrus going 'woo woo!'!
- "His Maintenance": One guitar line is in 4/4, the other in 6/4. Interestingly wrong-headed, but hard to listen to!

Disgusting Lyrics Include:
- "I tied one end of the rope to the tip of my prick and the other to the exhaust of my girlfriend's car. 'Hey' I said, 'Put the peddle to the metal.'"
- "Her curfew cannot prevent the pigeon-toed daughter from getting fucked by a meat head"
- "She's getting an equipment rash on her thighs to repulse the tourists that sightsee around her"
- "Repeat that doggie-style amusement for a sticky home-comin' king"
- "Oh mama uses the plunger to suck the milkshakes out of my ass and serve it to the battered wives"
- "As her crotch starts smoking and her pussy explodes, it puts us in egg-hunting mode"
- "Ignore her deathbed snatch because your bastard son might hatch"
- "I can't get stiff during these family vacations. Daddy tucked his panties away in my luggage."

Rough Day At The Orifice earns a 7 on my scale. At its best, it's noisy, stupid and gleeful. But too often, one of the guitarists fails to put on his thinking pants.

Hi, I'm Stinky Lips McGafferty! Pleased to meet you and your acquaintance. Today on the Stinky Lips McGafferty Showcase Of Patootie Landscape Machine, we're talking about the Arab On Radar EP Soak The Saddle. Oops! We're out of limes here at tehatwe

The first sound you hear is Nirvana's "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter." Then you are suddenly thrust into a demented lakeside retreat where an alarm clock RINGS RINGS RINGS from the bottom of the ocean as two kayakers bash you with their paddles over and over and over again -- bah-BAP!-a bah-BAP!-a bah-BAP!-a. It's a crashing bashing Joy Explosion of Physical Trauma! If the entire 20-minute EP were this viscerally overwhelming, Soak The Saddle would be the greatest CD ever. Instead, it's just Arab On Radar's greatest CD ever.

You know how normally when a bass player quits a band, the other members find a replacement? Well, true to ridiculous form, Arab On Radar -- THE BAND WITH THE TREBLIEST GUITARS IN THE UNIVERSE - decided, "Eh... nah." Thankfully they've saved us all from a life of Ear AIDS by pumping up the guitars until they aren't so much 'trebly' as 'blistering.' Furthermore, the vocals are even more high-pitched than before, the drum patterns are the most hilariously stupid yet, and both guitarists are doing their ample finest to create 'hooks' from what sounds like made-up shit racket (but ISN'T! It's ALL pre-written patterns of wrong notes, detuned string bends and irritating noises! I'm serious -- focus on one of the guitar noises and listen to it for 30 seconds. See? It's constantly repeating!). Like no other Arab On Radar release, Soak The Saddledemands that you shove your head between the speakers, turn it up full blast, and feel your brain ooze into a bubbly mass of plop.

The songs have no titles - just numbers. And the numbers are in the wrong order. So, for example, track 4 is entitled "#1." The 9th song is "#3." If you're looking for "#4," that'd be track 7. And just to be irritating, track 6 is, indeed, "#6."

Hilarious Drumbeats Include:
- Track 9 ("#3"): PITTUP-pa-dudda PITTUP-pa-dudda PITTUP-pa-dudda
- Track 8 ("#9"): CRASH-CRASH-CRASH-THUB-THUB-THUB-THUB CRASH-CRASH-CRASH-THUB-THUB-THUB-THUB
- Track 3 ("#2"): This drum rhythm literally clatters to a slow halt at the end of every single line. So the BPM of the song never remains the same for more than a second at a time! The guitars respond by making a bunch of hysterically unmusical clitter-clatter, jigga-vwoop, meowing, divebombing scraggly racket -- and repeating the shambling idiot noise over and over as if it were a 'riff'!!!

Disgusting Lyrics Include:
- "Nice girls know not to straddle a horse. Nice girls don't soak the saddle."
- "It stinks like action in here. I told you that activity was prohibited until your menstrual cycle begins."
- "Hard-ons for homeruns, come-ons in the synagogue"
- "Assisted living makes her horny"
- "The penalty for bedwetting is neglect"
- "Have you ever seen a teenager with a package quite like that? No, and I ain't ever seen a gym teacher so attracted to a student."
- "I began to radiate a primitive stink. I sensed he wanted to rip off my jogging shorts."
- "I fondled him like a professional."

Funny Descriptions In My Notes Include:
- "GUITAR ABUSE! Wait - those string slides are HARMONIZED!?"
- "Drunk-sounding bottleneck sloppiness - none too melodic! Wait -- that bendy-string bit is a RIFF!?!"
- "So retarded!"
- "One guitar plays a googly little note line while the other just beats blindly at a rhythm like he's dribbling a basketball on the neck. Then the entire song collapses!"
- "The high guitar goes up the fret then down the fret, while the other just goes 'whoo-ooo-ooo!"
- "Nice melodic note run in left speaker! Then it goes CRANG-CRANG-CRANG"
- "Dramatic insistent drumbeat! Serious important note riff! And the other guitar's just making squiggly noises."
- "Butterfly swoops on the left, bendy drug use on the right, ridiculous drum pattern in the middle. That's rock 'n roll!!!"
- "A forboding air raid siren being pumped through a huge abandoned industrial factory! No, wait -- there's an epileptic in the break room, flopping around on a drumkit."

Is this music?? Well, it's played on guitars and drums, and includes parts that repeat. So... sure! And it sounds like nothing I've ever heard in my life (aside from other AOR records, obviously), which is really what my brain craves at this point, and part of the reason I have no interest at all in hearing the latest indie rock records, even if they have some catchy songs (which they don't). I'm not trying to be elitist -- if I were, I sure wouldn't do it with a band this stupid! I've just heard far too many records in my life to really give a shit what Super Furry Animals or Modest Moust have to say (particularly since their vocalists sound like Elvis Costello and a hick respectively). Give me some new ideas or BREAK UP!

On that note - and on a MUCH more melodic tip - if you haven't yet heard The Cardiacs and/or TV On The Radio, DO SO!

chalkdork@hotmail.com
Mum says I can't talk to you anymore because the package I got from Amazon this morning is doing my (hers) brain in. She said it was bad enough hearing Coalesce's 'Give Them Rope' (she was tidying up and didn't realise the full horror until she sat down for a second listen, as you said), but now that we've gone through our forth straight run-through of 'Soak the Saddle', she says I've pushed liberal parenting too far. It's not MY fault she sat down when I put this on for the second time, and it's not MY fault she's still here for the fifth! It's also not MY fault I was BORN!

She said "I know you haven't heard of those bands before, but, just because Mark gives something a '10' doesn't mean you have to run out and buy it. If he jumped off a cliff, would YOU?" I said "That's not true, Ma! He gave 'Joshua Tree' and 'Wowee Zowee' tens and you haven't found THEM under my bed! I HATE YOU!!".

She says it's not healthy for me to listen to an album this many times in a row and that I've wasted two hours, when I could have been watching TV.

She called Dad at work and he said to me "It might be fascinating, son, but what you have to realise is that band are not your friends. Jeremy, next door. He's your friend, now, isn't he?". He said we'd talk about it when he gets home.

I bet they don't give me my pocket money now, so I won't be able to get 'Yahweh or the Highway'. Ther so dum!

Anyway, Mum's put on Strapping Fieldhands to "calm me down" and I think she's ringing YOUR mum, 'cos I heard her say to my sister "That Mrs Prindle has got to learn how it control her boy, and it starts here." So I'm sorry if you get into trouble, Mark. It is kinda your fault though.

Scarab On Gaydar is back with another 8 songs and 25 minutes worth of
rubby wiggly bits, spastic guitar string splanking, and harmonic
dissonance. In addition to lower-pitched and oft-doubled vocals, this
CD features more thoughtful guitar interplay than the last two, as well
as some of the most bizarre songwriting approaches in history. In
short, their brains are at an absolute peak here, and the only thing
preventing it from earning the coveted '10' are a few moments so
purposely irritating that I'd never forgive myself for awarding it a
perfect score. But mandarin orange is it an idea-packed mindscratcher.
I will now briefly describe each song so you'll understand what
differentiates this disc from, say, Lil' Wayne's Tha Carter III,
to which it's often compared.

Individual Song Descriptions Include:
- "My Mind Is A Muffler" - One of the guitarists is playing an actual
melody!!!! One you might hear in an actual song!!!!! The
other is... not doing that.
- "Cocaine Mummy" - Skrankly guitar racket! A veritable SHAMBLING
CALAMITY!
- "God Is Dad" - One guitar plays an actual series of musical
notes!!!! The other makes a vroomy fwoosh noise.
- "Semen On The Mount" - Locusts in the right speaker, a drunkard in the
left and a three-legged elephant in the middle. No wait! Now the
elephant is down to one leg and the locusts have turned into a
meowing bag of cats.
- "Vatican Is Up To Bat Again" - Genius guitar interplay!!! Makes
Fugazi sound - well, still great, but different.
- "Di To Solve Pi" - Crazy sick DEATH music! Low bassy feedback hum of
DEATH!
- "Father, Son, And The Goalie Post" - The left guitar is a little tiny
man running as fast fast fast as his itty bitty feet can carry him up a
big ol' scary mountain! The right is some asshole at the top throwing
barrels of tomato paste at him.
- "Birth Control Blues" - Absolute genius. The two guitarists create
the most strident trebly high-pitched buzzing ear-torture possible --
like a horrible police car blasting its siren right outside your window
- and the drummer (for the first time in - what, four albums!?)
plays a normal 4/4 rock beat, giving the sack of racket the
appearance of an 'actual song'! You'll laugh, you'll cry -- you'll both
caugh and lry!

Disgusting Lyrics Include:
- "Sometimes I just gotta jerk off. My nuts are a pressure cooker."
- "Stinkin' the garage with that first time smell. Fillin' her
bellybutton up with my purpose."
- "Your kids will dream about their teachers' muffs"
- "I told her I don't like the way her pussy tastes. She said 'shush'
as she sat on my face. I only get her on the egg hunting days. Her
other lovers get her on the hairy desert days."
- "He won't stop holding his weiner. I can't get him to take off this
fucking jock-strap. His shrink says he suffers from castrate something,
uh...."

Okay, I just watched a bunch of Arab On Radar concert footage on YouTube
and am astonished to report that they actually recreated all these weird
noises live. It's hard to tell from the camera angles exactly what
they're doing, but I have to assume that one or two of their strings are
detuned and bendy because a lot of the studio material sounds like
they're just pulling and releasing a broken string -- and apparently
that's not the case at all! Check it out and let me know what you
think.

I was also chuckled to see that (a) they had a band uniform, (b) they
enjoyed silly stomps and leg movements, and (c) they began each song
with a falsettoed "1,2,3,4!" Oh to be a young man again and actually
discover new bands before they've already broken up. These days I'm
lucky to hear about Chuck Berry by the time we've colonized the moon!

On a related note, Misty Mundae is almost THIRTY!!! What's going to
happen to her??? You know she can't act!!! Is she finally going
to hang up her vagina and go work at Taco Bell??? Or pull a Lina Romay
and keep flapping it around til she's 900 years old and fat as a
house???

Incidentally, that was totally cool of me to completely insult two of my
favorite sexploitation stars.

And another thing! What's up with CHRISTINA LINDBERG these
days??? "Flying Magazine"? Yeah, more like "YOU'RE OLD!!!"

Reader Comments

elliotimes@yahoo.com
I was lucky enough to see Arab On Radar, in 2002 with The Locust and Lightning Bolt. As you've already gathered from that footage, they were fucking ridiculous. Main memories of it are:
-The singer doing the Snoopy dance where he just ran in place really fast, with his tongue wagging everywhere, then yelling right at me and stroking my face
-The one guitarist having a Fu Manchu 'stache and having this demented look about him
-The other guitarist being way too handsome and normal-looking to be in that band
-The drummer yelling "1-2-3-4" in falsetto at the beginning of EVERY song

Needless to say, they were mind-blowing.

My friend Bill came up with the best description of Arab On Radar I've ever heard: "They're like audio child porn." A band that clearly would have been happy with having zero fans, and the fact that anyone liked them was a miracle. I am one of those people. This album especially is such a bold statement for a band to make, and like you said, no one else in the world has approached music like this before or since.

The singer and drummer(?) have a band called Chinese Stars, and the one guitarist has a band called Made In Mexico. Neither are as interesting as AOR.

chalkdork@hotmail.com (James)
I think I've been spoiled by hearing "Soak the Saddle" first. With that album came Shock, Awe, Glee and Something Else Besides (thank you, Mark). With this one, it's not a case of "heard it all before", it's more like "if you shoot me in the dick, the second bullet probably ain't gonna hurt as much". Quote/unquote me.
This album is certainly as unhinged as "Soak", but I think "Soak" is flawless.
The lyrics on this one are just as horrible. "I only get her on the egg hunting days" makes me wanna go all gay; no eggs in a man, 'ceppin fer da ones that he et fer brefticks.
Musically, Prindle is much better at describing it, so I won't bother.
I hate the way they end this record with one of the best songs ever recorded by Neil Armstrong , 'cos it makes me feel bad about not putting it on the same level as "Soak".
If I woke up next to this album, with my arm around it, I'd have to say "As much as I love you, It's not you, it's me. I'm in love with your older sister."
9. Older sister holds the 10.

This is a compilation of the band's entire non-EP output, including three singles (95, 96 and 98) and the AOR tracks from two split-singles (00 w/The Locust, 02 w/Kid Commando) and two Load Records compilations (96, 98). Every song but one pre-dates Yahweh, and a full HALF of the 12 songs in fact pre-date Queen Hygiene! So this really more of a history lesson (Where did they GET that sound? Did they ALWAYS sound like that?) than a picture of the band at their experimental peak. But it's still mighty good! Plus, if you fear art, you'll appreciate that this is the most musical material AOR ever did. Let's discuss it single-by-single, in case you're a single-ster.

"Inventor"/"Aisle 5"/"O. Henry" cassette-only release - Far from the Downs Syndrome Disco they would later pioneer, AOR actually began their career sounding like Public Image Ltd.'s Metal Box! These songs are comprised of crisp dancey 4/4 beats, dubby bass hooks, piercing but catchy guitar note riffs in each speaker, and what appear to be non-obscene lyrics! It's an enjoyable listen, but obviously less original than everything else they ever released. I give it a 7.

"Pig Roast"/"Kangaroo" - My! It certainly didn't take them long to turn into a bunch of Special Olympics competitors, did it? As early as their second single, they'd already decided that fucking with listeners' preconceptions was a much more worthwhile pursuit than imitating their idols. "Kangaroo"'s guitar line slides up, down and around a fuzzed-out bass line in a near-normal way (if Captain Beefheart is normal), but "Pig Roast" is a hilarious, ridiculous lopey-dopey masterwork of idiocy built upon a simple pish-tup beat, wah-wahed swoopy gross bass tone, seasick guitar slides and water-bonged vocals. Still in 4/4, but a far cry from 'music that demands to be taken seriously'! I give it an 8. I like to give numbers to records.

"Swimming With A Hard-On"/"Samurai Fight Song" - By this point, they already had an album or two out so you know what to expect. You know what, fuck this

It's mean that the bassist played on 9 of these 12 songs yet she isn't included on the band photo page.

Jesus Lizardy guitar lines, cranky cranky cranky noises, blues-swingin' wiggly-slap, trebly cacophony, detective noir, prime-era noise abstraction - you'll find it all here if you look around, a bass line that refuses to follow the drumbeat even though the guitar line does, the lyric "The dog ate the messenger," it's all here. Not the most adventurous Arab On Radar material ever, but definitely the most accessible -- and it also includes what I believe to be the final recording of the band's career - 2002's "Running For Asthma," which finds one guitar trying to rev up like an old car that won't start as the other picks bendily like an Indian instrument, the drums go bump-tip-bumpbump-tip, some lower-pitched vocals are recited, then one guitar starts farting and bleating and it fades out then there's blah ablah stomping it's TOO LONG and has TOO MANY PARTS. It also has no energy at all. Great song, but it sucks! Also it's great!

I love this album, but some of the songs drag on way too long. Arab On Radar is a 2 1/2-minute band, not a 5-minute band. Thank you Record Label for gathering all these stray tracks onto a single CD; you done good! If you're looking for Arab On Radar's former members, look no further than The Chinese Stars, Athletic Automaton, Made in Mexico, and wherever people go in your neighborhood to smoke crack.

There's also an unrelated book of poetry out called Arab On Radar, written by an ACTUAL ARAB!!!! No clue why she named her book after the band though. Couldn't she have called it Where The Sidewalk Ends (On The Towel Wrapped Around My Head) or something? Ha ha! Good old ethnic wit, Don Rickles-style! Wait, here's more -- Hey, couldn't she have called it Stopping By Woods On A Jockeyed Camel or something??? HA AHAHAHAHAHAHH!!! AHAHAHAH!! Or wait! Or wait! How about The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock (And the 'J' stands for 'Jsandnigger'!)? HA AHAAHHAH! NO PC BOAT CAN STOP ME NOW!!!!! I SAY WHAT AMERICA THINKS! WOMEN ARE ON THE RAG!

Look, I have a long, exhausting and violent Tae Kwon Do black belt test coming up in three hours (going for my First Dan Second Level) so please forgive me if my mind isn't in 'writing' mode. Or 'funny' mode. Or any mode other than "Fuck, I'm gonna get my ass kicked in three hours."

Buy every Arab On Radar album, through this link right down here so I get a percentage of your payment. Hey! Nothing's in it for me! I'm doing this out of the kindness of my wallet!

3dsunglasses@gmail.com
My first exposure to Arab On Radar was at TOMS TRACKS in providence (http://ggallin.com/images/gallerypics/gg1.jpg). I was looking under a shelf where i found gold! Mint LPs by NWA, Dead Prez, and I found a vinyl single of Samurai Fight Song/Swimming With A Hard-On for 3$. I also got issue 3 of ANSWER me! magazine for free! Best find of my life, complete with a boyd rice interview. So I get home and blast that arab on radar. It was fucking amazing! Even better than lightning bolt, cause the vocals were amazing! I found the stolen singles online and loved it, it included that 7" along with the song Aile 5, which fucking pumps "Soul Food In Aile 5" i think is how it goes, the rest of the record is pretty amazing, people give the last song shit but it makes for a good comedown. I dl'd queen hygeine and liked it too, im gonna buy all the stuff i can by them ASAP. thanks for reviewing them, I forgot how much i loved them